STATCOUNTER

January 2016

No one knows more about your business than you do. You could tell people precisely how wide your Phufkel is, to the exact tenth of an inch. And why that particular shade of green enables the sentor to comfionlarte with the doohicky at precisely the correct angle to achieve the necessary drating.

And you would tell us even more, except that you have noticed that, sadly, our eyes have already glazed over. But who could resist, you wonder, the fascinating story you are weaving? Well, it turns out, most people cannot only resist your details; they have already turned the page, flipped the channel or gone on to the next web site.

There are many reasons not to tell your prospects everything you know. Sure, you hope that the more they know the more they will realize how much better your product is than the competition’s. And that the more facts you provide, the better your argument for superiority will sound. But of course, the opposite is usually the result. One reason to tell as terse a story as you can is that you just want to get people interested; the real selling takes place after you have peaked their interest.

But I think there is a more important reason. The best way to build your brand is to identify the one most important point you want to stand for, and stick to that simple story single-mindedly. Focus all your effort on telling that story in the most compelling manner you can. I remember my frozen custard client, who “branched out” to selling breakfast, soups, sandwiches and so on, in the reasonable hope that he would get additional sales. But what really happened is that he lost his unique identity, and became just another provider of various food items. Because he confused his story! It was no longer clear, straightforward, easy to understand and compelling in its directness.

His reason for being—frozen custard—was weakened by being just part of his story, rather than the spotlight.

So, make it as easy as you can for your prospect to know what you stand for and why you are different. That is not always easy to figure out, but it is so much more effective than giving in to the temptation to be all things to all people.

The post title is one of my New Year’s resolutions. And unless I lose twenty pounds and walk four miles every day, this may be the only resolution I keep. It is a supposedly famous quote by Samuel Beckett, though I had never heard of it before. (And if one of your resolutions is to tell the truth this year, I bet you’ll admit you never heard of it either.)

But I like the thought, particularly as it applies to creativity and marketing. After all, where is the satisfaction in failing with second-rate ideas, lazy words or trite visuals? We all know that failure is currently talked about as a good thing; if you’ve never failed, you haven’t tried hard enough.

The important part of failing is to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, learn something from your defeat, and start all over again, to badly paraphrase George Gershwin.

This doesn’t mean that you should treat failure as a goal. But it does mean that you should make sure that you can honestly tell yourself you’ve done as well as you could. You have at least an inkling as to what went wrong. And on you go.